Also, I believe the whole 'can a familiar use Ready as an Action' is at DM discretion. At least I'm not aware of anything that says a Familiar (or any of the animals they're based on) can use the Ready action. The whole discussion of Ready is in the section talking about player Action options.
All creatures can take the same general actions as players. Here is an excerpt from the MM:
When a monster takes its action, it can choose from the options in the Actions section of its stat block or use one of the actions available to all creatures, such as the Dash or Hide action, as described in the Player’s Handbook.
“Your familiar acts independently of you, but it always obeys your commands. In combat, it rolls its own initiative and acts on its own turn. A familiar can't attack, but it can take other actions as normal.”
If you really wanted to question a Held Action, you could talk about reactions... but all creatures and therefore Familiars can take those too:
”Finally, when you cast a spell with a range of touch, your familiar can deliver the spell as if it had cast the spell. Your familiar must be within 100 feet of you, and it must use its reaction to deliver the spell when you cast it. If the spell requires an attack roll, you use your attack modifier for the roll.”
So, say your Familiar rolled a 15 for initiative and you a 10. On the Familiar’s turn it could use half it’s movement to ‘mount’ you (Land on shoulder, or climb up you) and then Hold an Action: Use the Help action when my Master commands me to. On your turn you move up to a monster and command your familiar, which uses it’s reaction to do the Help action, and then you can make one attack with Advantage.
Sorry for those that just assumed all the above, I figured I should spell it out. Now admittedly, It is feasibly to question if you can use your psychic link during you Familiar’s turn or if you have to ‘store up’ commands during your own turn... the most obvious example would be for the first turn when your Familiar has reacted before you or not been caught in a surprise round: how would you be able to command it... Now you could establish general tactics for your familiar to obey given specific scenarios, like the one above.
Well, communication is free and doesn't respect turn order, anyone can talk (or use telepathy) at any time as long as it isn't a long monologue. But, keep in mind that your Familiar does still only have 2 intelligence, so your freaked out Cat may not ultimately carry out your tactical plan with perfect precision (though honestly I think it's underhanded for the DM to hijack the player's ability to work well with his critter buddy)
But, keep in mind that your Familiar does still only have 2 intelligence, so your freaked out Cat may not ultimately carry out your tactical plan with perfect precision (though honestly I think it's underhanded for the DM to hijack the player's ability to work well with his critter buddy)
What do you interpret, "it always obeys your commands" to mean? Because I interpret it as "carries out your tactical plan with perfect precision" (assuming you actually ordered it to do so). A familiar's failure should indicate a poor tactical plan and not that the familiar was too stupid to execute.
Owl's are the best for the flyby and darkvision, but I would not use it for advantage in combat. If you think any DM worth his salt will let you use a familiar to gain advantage in combat without that familiar being a target for a ranged attack, you are sorely mistaken. Their AC and health is so low, it won't be hard for someone to take it down, not to mention it's kind of a jerk move to use a familiar like that. They are fey or celestial (or fiend if you are evil) and throwing an actual being into a situation where it will more than likely be killed is tantamount to torturing animals. I doubt that would look favorable to good aligned gods. It used to be that if a familiar was killed, you would lose HP permanently. That isn't the case now, but throwing a bird out to get wrecked in combat isn't going to end well. In 20 levels of playing my Wizard, my owl was killed once and I RP'd that as a great loss as he was my Wizard's companion for hundreds of years. Even though he could easily bring him back, it's not a thing he or anyone with a familiar should take lightly. Not to mention at lower levels the 10gp used and hour of ritual casting could be a pain and any AOE at higher levels will just smoke them outright. Familiars are very good for scouting and for flavor, not very useful in combat, not counting a warlock familiar.
Familiars are very good for scouting and for flavor, not very useful in combat, not counting a warlock familiar.
Would you keep your familiar away from the action scouting for backup and giving you a potential for a birds-eye-view and then also giving you the potential for a flyby if you really needed it... Or (as cautious as you seemed to be) would you keep it in a pocket dimension when combat started?
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D&D, Youth Work and the Priesthood sadly do not typically interact... I do what I can!
As a Wizard, I never used him for combat as a flyby as I was never near the front lines. A Wizard near the front lines will last about as long as the familiar lol. Mostly scouting ahead as we travel, while on watch at night to keep an eye out for anything approaching, or in dungeons to scout down passages unless it was a heavy combat area. Outside combat and in town he would be out, but in the majority of dungeon crawls he was in the pocket dimension. One average longbow shot and you are down 10 gold and an hour of ritual casting.
Familiars have there own turn though and it has to be within 5 feet of an enemy in order to use help. So in order for this to work, either you have to end your turn within 5 feet of an enemy, or the familiar will have to travel to the enemy and back (more than likely the second one if the enemy moves before the familiar). Thus owl.
Yep. This is basically every round at my table. Owl flies by and uses the help action before flying away. Next round: Rinse and repeat.
definitely a dead owl at my table as well...and I'd follow it up with a "Your familiar is now dead. In order to resummon it, you need to light a brazier, spend somewhere between an hour and an hour and ten minutes casting the spell, and loose 10gp worth of materials you toss into the brazier." ...just because i totally dislike this constant use of the familiar - alls it does it adversely affect the balance of the adventure and make the player comparatively more powerful than everyone else at the table. It's not fun for anyone else. The familiar spell just wasn't designed to give someone permanent advantage and an owl constantly flying in something's face WILL get swatted out of the sky.
Also, I believe the whole 'can a familiar use Ready as an Action' is at DM discretion. At least I'm not aware of anything that says a Familiar (or any of the animals they're based on) can use the Ready action. The whole discussion of Ready is in the section talking about player Action options.
well...unless the familiar is at least as smart as a border collie...but even then I'd make the player use their own Reaction to trigger the familiar's Readied Action.
having said that though, as a DM, I love a party with a familiar in outdoor settings. That way I can just drop the map on the table and say 'ok, your owl sees this'. just makes it way easier.
Ahh yes, another DM that RAW rules because it's "overpowered" and was "never intended".
As if owls having flyby and being a viable option for a familiar somehow went completely unnoticed by the game designers (even tho it was in most previous version of D&D). And somehow a spell that costs an investment of both time, gold, and learned spells/spell training to give a single attack per round advantage is somehow "over powered"
And the solution? Kill the owl as often as possible because you dont like it.
You sir, are an awful DM. Not because you don't like this behavior. That just means you have poor opinions. But your method of handling it is to allow the player to pick a playstyle they want to make work to feel awesome, invest the time/money/energy into trying to play that playstyle, and then doing your very best to make this playstyle not work by playing the game out in a way that focuses this playstyle to "teach" the player to play the way you think they should play.
This is no different than always focusing the wizard or similar squishy member of the party because you think they're too strong and you dont like that they always sit in the back.
A competent dm would simply talk to his players, and tell them that you dont like this interaction, and you would not allow it in your game, before the choice has been made, or allow them to work on a different playstyle due to your bias against a non overpowered ability.
As to the "DM discretion." You're correct but only in the way that EVERYTHING is up to dm discretion, because that's how being the DM works. BUT, you're very incorrect if you think that per RAW familiars cannot hold action to help. They absolutely can, per raw, every single round, and if you want to rule that they cant, it's not because you're interpreting the rules differently, it's because you're choosing to go against them. Which, by itself, would be fine, as long as you were being honest about it.
Feel free to re-skin anything you want into anything else. As long as you’re not changing mechanics there should be no problem what so ever.
ive got a warforged wizard whose familiar is reassembled clockwork mechanisms, but the familiar is still entirely limited to what the original spell description says mechanically.
as far as familiar uses, if found the bat to be quite useful. The blindsight can be wonderful when you’re in heavy obscurity. The perception is great too.
I'm all for reflavoring and reskinning. I do it all the time with my character concepts. BUT, if you want to reskin something to look like something that already exists in-game, I'd say no. For example, I'd allow a player to reflavor a halberd to be a bill hook, but I wouldn't allow a player to reflavor a halberd to be a pike, because stats already exist for the pike.
Ask your DM, but as a DM, I'd rule that you should use the hawk.
I dont see that example as being a problem either. My table seems to be playing with more small size races lately, and some of them are martials. We reflector their warhammers and long swords as mauls and great swords, but they’re still using the warhammer and long sword features.
Well, communication is free and doesn't respect turn order, anyone can talk (or use telepathy) at any time as long as it isn't a long monologue. But, keep in mind that your Familiar does still only have 2 intelligence, so your freaked out Cat may not ultimately carry out your tactical plan with perfect precision (though honestly I think it's underhanded for the DM to hijack the player's ability to work well with his critter buddy)
It's a cat. Of course it's going to sabotage the player's well conceived plan. That is just good roleplaying on the DM's part ;)
Just to be clear, the above sentence is meant to be a joke and nothing more.
And the solution? Kill the owl as often as possible because you dont like it.
No, you kill the owl because it's getting involved in the combat and it's easy to kill. You don't even have to specifically target it if the party is fighting anything with any kind of AoE damage.
If the spellcaster is dumb enough to put an incredibly fragile familiar in harm's way, it's gonna get poofed on a regular basis.
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
It’s not dumb. If the DMs creature spends an attack or resource to get rid of the familiar, that’s usually a positive for the party. Any damage that the familiar takes is damage the party wasnt targeted with, unless AOEs are in the picture. Even if AOEs are being used, they’re not as effective when targeting the caster and familiar if the AOE could have targeted multiple party members.
10gp is a decent amount of gold at low level when recasting find familiar, but it’s still cheaper and more useful than a health potion.
It’s not dumb. If the DMs creature spends an attack or resource to get rid of the familiar, that’s usually a positive for the party. Any damage that the familiar takes is damage the party was t targeted with, unless AOEs are in the picture. Even if AOEs are being used, they’re not as effective when targeting the caster and familiar if the AOE could have targeted multiple party members.
I was responding to someone who seemed outraged at the very idea a familiar might take damage or be targeted ("You sir, are an awful DM"), so yeah, it's dumb if you expect your familiar to never, ever die
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
No, you kill the owl because it's getting involved in the combat and it's easy to kill. You don't even have to specifically target it if the party is fighting anything with any kind of AoE damage.
If the spellcaster is dumb enough to put an incredibly fragile familiar in harm's way, it's gonna get poofed on a regular basis.
I was responding to someone who seemed outraged at the very idea a familiar might take damage or be targeted ("You sir, are an awful DM"), so yeah, it's dumb if you expect your familiar to never, ever die
I'm not outraged at the very idea that a familiar might take damage or be targeted. You might want to re-read both what I quoted and my response as your reading comprehension seems to have taken this in a different direction.
A familiar in combat being targeted, or dying is not a problem by itself. If it happens, it happens.
A familiar being specifically targeted, not because they're a good target or anything, but because the DM doesn't like the playstyle of it providing the help action once per turn, and because he thinks it's overpowered, IS the mark of an aweful DM. Again. not because he would dare target the familiar, but because he's going out of his way to stifle a playstyle that his player had leaned into, (and one that, I might add, is in no way "overpowered", but that's not really the point even if it were).
If you read what he said, he's just saying that he would ensure to specifically target the familiar doing his very best to kill it and force the player to spend the maximum time and effort to get it back only so that he could kill it again if the player plays the game in a way he doesn't like.
Even a new and halfway decent dm would know that they didn't like this playstyle and discuss it with their player first. That way the player could lean into a different playstyle knowing that the playstyle they had wanted to lean into would be denied due to the dms actions.
At the end of the day. D&D is about telling a story in a way that makes you feel awesome, without ruining the fun for the rest of the people at the table. The only one at the table who wouldn't like this type of play would be this dm, BUT, even still, the best way to counteract this is to discuss it first. The DM should man or woman up and say "I dont like this, I dont want it at my table" rather than let the player pick a playstyle that works per raw and is actually rather common, then go out of his way to make the player's experience less fun, not because it makes sense, but because he doesn't like it.
If something is flapping in my face every round to my major detriment and it is very easy to kill, I'm going to take it out. Not doing so requires behavior that doesn't make sense in the world. That's my perspective as a DM.
I have used a familiar to get advantage before, but I treat it as a risky move to be used when I really need it and I know I'm risking my familiar to do so. That's my perspective as a player.
It's not supposed to be auto-advantage every round. That is beyond the scope of a level 1 spell, especially on top of everything a familiar can do outside of combat. If you disagree, feel free to provide an example of a level 1 spell that can have as great of an impact with an indefinite duration. The fragility of the familiar is a built-in deterrent from this behavior. Ignoring that limitation is like ignoring that haste incapacitates you when it wears off because your PC's whole character concept is that they are fast and this part of the rules contradicts their intended badassery.
If you approach it from a player's rights kind of thing, think about the other players at the table who don't get free advantage every turn with minimal resource expenditure. It's not fair to them. You don't shut down an OP build because you're fighting the player. You do it because you're looking out for the other players. Me? I can handle an OP build. I have unlimited power.
Of course if it's a major part of the character concept, it should come up as part of the session zero discussion just like any other clearly dodgy build choice. I'd recommend they go Beastmaster Ranger and allow them to flank with their beast if they want to be someone working in tandem with their pet in combat on a regular basis.
If your letting the familiar give advantage specifically to the caster every round, your probably giving the familiar the ability to do so without using the spell properly. The familiar has its own initiative, so it’s much more likely to give a teammate advantage, which is wonderful teamwork.
A familiar being specifically targeted, not because they're a good target or anything, but because the DM doesn't like the playstyle of it providing the help action once per turn, and because he thinks it's overpowered, IS the mark of an aweful DM.
No, it's the mark of a player who thinks their familiar will never, ever die because they keep sending it into combat, or the mark of a player who doesn't care whether the familiar dies or not.
Either way, the familiar absolutely should be targeted if it makes itself worth targeting. That's not being "an awful DM".
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
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I think artificer and shoulder mount an eldritch cannon haha.
Your secret is safe with my indifference - Percy
All creatures can take the same general actions as players. Here is an excerpt from the MM:
And in accordance with the Find Familiar spell:
“Your familiar acts independently of you, but it always obeys your commands. In combat, it rolls its own initiative and acts on its own turn. A familiar can't attack, but it can take other actions as normal.”
If you really wanted to question a Held Action, you could talk about reactions... but all creatures and therefore Familiars can take those too:
”Finally, when you cast a spell with a range of touch, your familiar can deliver the spell as if it had cast the spell. Your familiar must be within 100 feet of you, and it must use its reaction to deliver the spell when you cast it. If the spell requires an attack roll, you use your attack modifier for the roll.”
So, say your Familiar rolled a 15 for initiative and you a 10. On the Familiar’s turn it could use half it’s movement to ‘mount’ you (Land on shoulder, or climb up you) and then Hold an Action: Use the Help action when my Master commands me to. On your turn you move up to a monster and command your familiar, which uses it’s reaction to do the Help action, and then you can make one attack with Advantage.
Sorry for those that just assumed all the above, I figured I should spell it out. Now admittedly, It is feasibly to question if you can use your psychic link during you Familiar’s turn or if you have to ‘store up’ commands during your own turn... the most obvious example would be for the first turn when your Familiar has reacted before you or not been caught in a surprise round: how would you be able to command it... Now you could establish general tactics for your familiar to obey given specific scenarios, like the one above.
Well, communication is free and doesn't respect turn order, anyone can talk (or use telepathy) at any time as long as it isn't a long monologue. But, keep in mind that your Familiar does still only have 2 intelligence, so your freaked out Cat may not ultimately carry out your tactical plan with perfect precision (though honestly I think it's underhanded for the DM to hijack the player's ability to work well with his critter buddy)
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
What do you interpret, "it always obeys your commands" to mean? Because I interpret it as "carries out your tactical plan with perfect precision" (assuming you actually ordered it to do so). A familiar's failure should indicate a poor tactical plan and not that the familiar was too stupid to execute.
Owl's are the best for the flyby and darkvision, but I would not use it for advantage in combat. If you think any DM worth his salt will let you use a familiar to gain advantage in combat without that familiar being a target for a ranged attack, you are sorely mistaken. Their AC and health is so low, it won't be hard for someone to take it down, not to mention it's kind of a jerk move to use a familiar like that. They are fey or celestial (or fiend if you are evil) and throwing an actual being into a situation where it will more than likely be killed is tantamount to torturing animals. I doubt that would look favorable to good aligned gods. It used to be that if a familiar was killed, you would lose HP permanently. That isn't the case now, but throwing a bird out to get wrecked in combat isn't going to end well. In 20 levels of playing my Wizard, my owl was killed once and I RP'd that as a great loss as he was my Wizard's companion for hundreds of years. Even though he could easily bring him back, it's not a thing he or anyone with a familiar should take lightly. Not to mention at lower levels the 10gp used and hour of ritual casting could be a pain and any AOE at higher levels will just smoke them outright. Familiars are very good for scouting and for flavor, not very useful in combat, not counting a warlock familiar.
Would you keep your familiar away from the action scouting for backup and giving you a potential for a birds-eye-view and then also giving you the potential for a flyby if you really needed it... Or (as cautious as you seemed to be) would you keep it in a pocket dimension when combat started?
As a Wizard, I never used him for combat as a flyby as I was never near the front lines. A Wizard near the front lines will last about as long as the familiar lol. Mostly scouting ahead as we travel, while on watch at night to keep an eye out for anything approaching, or in dungeons to scout down passages unless it was a heavy combat area. Outside combat and in town he would be out, but in the majority of dungeon crawls he was in the pocket dimension. One average longbow shot and you are down 10 gold and an hour of ritual casting.
Ahh yes, another DM that RAW rules because it's "overpowered" and was "never intended".
As if owls having flyby and being a viable option for a familiar somehow went completely unnoticed by the game designers (even tho it was in most previous version of D&D). And somehow a spell that costs an investment of both time, gold, and learned spells/spell training to give a single attack per round advantage is somehow "over powered"
And the solution? Kill the owl as often as possible because you dont like it.
You sir, are an awful DM. Not because you don't like this behavior. That just means you have poor opinions. But your method of handling it is to allow the player to pick a playstyle they want to make work to feel awesome, invest the time/money/energy into trying to play that playstyle, and then doing your very best to make this playstyle not work by playing the game out in a way that focuses this playstyle to "teach" the player to play the way you think they should play.
This is no different than always focusing the wizard or similar squishy member of the party because you think they're too strong and you dont like that they always sit in the back.
A competent dm would simply talk to his players, and tell them that you dont like this interaction, and you would not allow it in your game, before the choice has been made, or allow them to work on a different playstyle due to your bias against a non overpowered ability.
As to the "DM discretion." You're correct but only in the way that EVERYTHING is up to dm discretion, because that's how being the DM works. BUT, you're very incorrect if you think that per RAW familiars cannot hold action to help. They absolutely can, per raw, every single round, and if you want to rule that they cant, it's not because you're interpreting the rules differently, it's because you're choosing to go against them. Which, by itself, would be fine, as long as you were being honest about it.
Feel free to re-skin anything you want into anything else. As long as you’re not changing mechanics there should be no problem what so ever.
ive got a warforged wizard whose familiar is reassembled clockwork mechanisms, but the familiar is still entirely limited to what the original spell description says mechanically.
as far as familiar uses, if found the bat to be quite useful. The blindsight can be wonderful when you’re in heavy obscurity. The perception is great too.
I'm all for reflavoring and reskinning. I do it all the time with my character concepts. BUT, if you want to reskin something to look like something that already exists in-game, I'd say no. For example, I'd allow a player to reflavor a halberd to be a bill hook, but I wouldn't allow a player to reflavor a halberd to be a pike, because stats already exist for the pike.
Ask your DM, but as a DM, I'd rule that you should use the hawk.
I dont see that example as being a problem either. My table seems to be playing with more small size races lately, and some of them are martials. We reflector their warhammers and long swords as mauls and great swords, but they’re still using the warhammer and long sword features.
It's a cat. Of course it's going to sabotage the player's well conceived plan. That is just good roleplaying on the DM's part ;)
Just to be clear, the above sentence is meant to be a joke and nothing more.
No, you kill the owl because it's getting involved in the combat and it's easy to kill. You don't even have to specifically target it if the party is fighting anything with any kind of AoE damage.
If the spellcaster is dumb enough to put an incredibly fragile familiar in harm's way, it's gonna get poofed on a regular basis.
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
It’s not dumb. If the DMs creature spends an attack or resource to get rid of the familiar, that’s usually a positive for the party. Any damage that the familiar takes is damage the party wasnt targeted with, unless AOEs are in the picture. Even if AOEs are being used, they’re not as effective when targeting the caster and familiar if the AOE could have targeted multiple party members.
10gp is a decent amount of gold at low level when recasting find familiar, but it’s still cheaper and more useful than a health potion.
I was responding to someone who seemed outraged at the very idea a familiar might take damage or be targeted ("You sir, are an awful DM"), so yeah, it's dumb if you expect your familiar to never, ever die
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I'm not outraged at the very idea that a familiar might take damage or be targeted. You might want to re-read both what I quoted and my response as your reading comprehension seems to have taken this in a different direction.
A familiar in combat being targeted, or dying is not a problem by itself. If it happens, it happens.
A familiar being specifically targeted, not because they're a good target or anything, but because the DM doesn't like the playstyle of it providing the help action once per turn, and because he thinks it's overpowered, IS the mark of an aweful DM. Again. not because he would dare target the familiar, but because he's going out of his way to stifle a playstyle that his player had leaned into, (and one that, I might add, is in no way "overpowered", but that's not really the point even if it were).
If you read what he said, he's just saying that he would ensure to specifically target the familiar doing his very best to kill it and force the player to spend the maximum time and effort to get it back only so that he could kill it again if the player plays the game in a way he doesn't like.
Even a new and halfway decent dm would know that they didn't like this playstyle and discuss it with their player first. That way the player could lean into a different playstyle knowing that the playstyle they had wanted to lean into would be denied due to the dms actions.
At the end of the day. D&D is about telling a story in a way that makes you feel awesome, without ruining the fun for the rest of the people at the table. The only one at the table who wouldn't like this type of play would be this dm, BUT, even still, the best way to counteract this is to discuss it first. The DM should man or woman up and say "I dont like this, I dont want it at my table" rather than let the player pick a playstyle that works per raw and is actually rather common, then go out of his way to make the player's experience less fun, not because it makes sense, but because he doesn't like it.
If something is flapping in my face every round to my major detriment and it is very easy to kill, I'm going to take it out. Not doing so requires behavior that doesn't make sense in the world. That's my perspective as a DM.
I have used a familiar to get advantage before, but I treat it as a risky move to be used when I really need it and I know I'm risking my familiar to do so. That's my perspective as a player.
It's not supposed to be auto-advantage every round. That is beyond the scope of a level 1 spell, especially on top of everything a familiar can do outside of combat. If you disagree, feel free to provide an example of a level 1 spell that can have as great of an impact with an indefinite duration. The fragility of the familiar is a built-in deterrent from this behavior. Ignoring that limitation is like ignoring that haste incapacitates you when it wears off because your PC's whole character concept is that they are fast and this part of the rules contradicts their intended badassery.
If you approach it from a player's rights kind of thing, think about the other players at the table who don't get free advantage every turn with minimal resource expenditure. It's not fair to them. You don't shut down an OP build because you're fighting the player. You do it because you're looking out for the other players. Me? I can handle an OP build. I have unlimited power.
Of course if it's a major part of the character concept, it should come up as part of the session zero discussion just like any other clearly dodgy build choice. I'd recommend they go Beastmaster Ranger and allow them to flank with their beast if they want to be someone working in tandem with their pet in combat on a regular basis.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
If your letting the familiar give advantage specifically to the caster every round, your probably giving the familiar the ability to do so without using the spell properly. The familiar has its own initiative, so it’s much more likely to give a teammate advantage, which is wonderful teamwork.
No, it's the mark of a player who thinks their familiar will never, ever die because they keep sending it into combat, or the mark of a player who doesn't care whether the familiar dies or not.
Either way, the familiar absolutely should be targeted if it makes itself worth targeting. That's not being "an awful DM".
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)